


The Depth of Perception

by Ophelia_Raine



Series: All Goode Things [1]
Category: The Crown (TV)
Genre: Adapted from TV series and Real Life, Affairs, Based on True Events, Daddy Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, How Ill-fated Marriages Get Made, Mummy Issues, Nude Modeling, Nude Photos, Photography, Romance, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, fictional biography
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:03:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ophelia_Raine/pseuds/Ophelia_Raine
Summary: In February 1958, a hedonistic photographer and a haughty princess meet. Neither will ever be the same again.A reimagination of the love affair between Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones.Based onThe Crownand true events.He doesn’t take her downstairs, not to his sitting room, not to his bedroom where it’s warm and violet and velvet and seductive. Instead, he takes his time to light her as she stands in the middle of his studio like a lone candle. She is fully clothed until he undresses her — first with his eyes, and then with each quiet command.He never touches her, even as he tells her how and what and where to strip and stare and stand. When he finally takes the shot, he can hear her every laboured breath, each pant a hardening of his resolve even as blood rushes down low and fills him to the point of distraction.She is exquisite.Fuck the Duke, he thinks.





	1. Chapter 1

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

He doesn’t remember the first time he saw her, whether it was in a magazine, the newspapers… She was way over _there_. Abstract. A concept. Royalty.  

Her uncle was the infamous King who fell head over dick with the twice-divorced Wallis woman and then promptly abandoned his post. Bloody uproar. Shambles. _Fucking_ funny, when you think about the flap. Then the serious and stuttering brother took over, of course. King George VI — her father. And now... now her sister is Queen.

He doesn’t remember his first impressions. She was just  _there_. Princess Margaret, the young Queen’s little sister. But then the papers got wind of that love affair with her father’s equerry, Peter whatsisface. And then all that sordid business with the palace keeping them apart. And suddenly she was _everywhere_. Loyal, passionate, defiant Margaret. The wronged princess, victim of a cruel royal conspiracy to thwart their nuptials. New press darling.

Large, deep-set eyes. Wide smile. Full lips and creamy complexion. Narrow little waist. 

The first time Antony 'Tony' Armstrong-Jones saw her in the flesh was at the cathedral. St Paul's, the day after her announcement not to marry her stoic older man after all. Her jewels were her armour that morning, her face hard like polished stone, her eyes glassy and unseeing. He had been too far away to get the shot.

The second was at that blasted wedding he barely caught on camera — Colin Tennant and Anne Coke's. He’d been taking a close-up of a boutonnière when he’d suddenly thought to turn… only to find the Princess M herself staring at him so mightily, it was almost a glare. One click and he had caught her, and then just as easily let go.

The third time was half an hour ago, when she arrived quite suddenly and all alone in the middle of Elizabeth Cavendish’s dinner party. 

* * *

She is completely out of her depth and quietly  _furious_ , which is amusing in and of itself. The Princess M stares at everything and everyone with chilly froideur but if she hopes to be fussed over at all, she has come to the absolute worst place on earth, he thinks now with a small smirk and a long, slow drag of his cigarette. They are commoners all, but there ain’t anything common about any one of them. Painters, writers, musicians, tiny tycoons and starving models, professional pretenders and insufferable sufferers for their goddamn Art. Television, stage, radio, print… one former exotic dancer, at least two closeted ones. Or so he had learnt very late one evening after two bottles of Stolichnaya. 

 _Poor darling_ , he grins darkly.

She sinks now into the newly abandoned loveseat as Dudley plays an old and favourite tune. She’s barely rubbed two words together the whole evening, not even returning the lukewarm collective Hello. “She wanted to be around different people tonight,” Cavendish had explained, shaking her head slightly. “She’s always needed novelty.”

“Don’t we all,” he had drawled, his eyes skimming the length of her neck, noting the way she holds her head and stares coolly around her. _Entertain me,_ she seems to demand and gets no answer whatsoever.

He watches as she slips a Chesterfield between her perfectly painted lips and he has to hide another grin when she works the flint wheel with thinning patience, as if wholly unused to lighting her own cigarettes. 

_Such a fucking princess._

He supposes it is ultimately pity that moves him to cross the room and offer her a light.

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

It’s his eyes that distract her the most — pale green and blue, almost iridescent and entirely too changeable. A wishy-washy nothing colour that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. But they’re clear and watchful and see entirely too much. 

“Now be honest,” he says now, his voice low and plummy, his manner far too forward and familiar. “Can you remember any of the names?”

She makes a small show of looking around the room even though she knows full well what the answer is. A quick flick about and she returns to stare at him.

“No, not really.” Drily.

“Can’t remember me either?”

But of course she can. Colin and Anne’s wedding. Horrid affair that just went on and on. And then _he_ showed up with his tousled hair and toy camera, leather jacket thrown over a crisp white shirt. He wore the look like a fine suit, and he had taken the strangest, almost intrusive pictures before swivelling around to throw the full weight of that piercing gaze at her like a javelin. 

Not that she’d ever give him the satisfaction of being unforgettable.

“What, we’ve met?” she says instead, with just a touch of disdain. 

“We have.” He empties his glass to hide his amusement. 

He points to people about the room, artfully peppering the introductions with such salacious gossip that even Philip now looks positively square. He gestures to some chocolate baron in a hideous polo and then to the stunning blonde wife. 

“Yes they dazzle in public, those two.” He looks at her now, a raffish smile turned up in the corners when he adds, “They don’t disappoint in private either.” He waits for her mouth to drop, and it does. “More of that another time, I think. Who’s next.”

He’s nothing like anyone she’s ever met and he knows it too. He’s entirely too charming, too polished, the wit surprising and razor-sharp, the appraising sweep of his gaze appreciative and insouciant. At first glance, she had thought him a man of average height, an artist most probably queer but now… Now he seems taller than Peter, leaner too with dark sandy hair and a scruff that is not to regulation. 

He is not unattractive at all. 

They are finishing off each other’s sentences now, laughing confidentially as they recite Betjemon behind his very back. Too familiar too soon, and the wine and the smoke and the jazz in the room wrap ‘round her like the softest pashmina. Finally, she feels every bit petted and pampered once more. As it should be. 

A tour of his work that lines the stairway. He refuses to call them portraits, the word itself taken almost as an affront to his artistry. Each piece is as dramatic as she had hoped, and there is a kind of naked truthfulness that equally scares and enthralls her. She was right. His eyes do see entirely too much.

“How would you feel about taking my photograph?” She words this as a question and not a command. A foreign place to be. 

“Well I’d consider it. On one condition.”

“Go on.” A chin tilted in challenge. 

“When you come to my slum studio, you leave the titles and princess outside—”

She scoffs. “I’d be happy to—”

“—and for the duration of the session... you do everything I say.” He smiles. “Oh don’t look at me like that,” he says softly. “You’re dying to.”

“Dying to... what?”

He stares at her. “Be a supplicant.”

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

She leaves like she enters — quiet, stately, with a shade of melodrama. _Look here,_ her primness commands as she sweeps the room with a glare. And then he watches as she waits sullenly until a hush falls over the room, until she holds every last pair of eyes before she turns on her heel wordlessly. He walks her to her car and slides his card in her hand.  

"I hope you had a lovely evening," he says with a small smile and tamps down a crow of triumph when her face softens. _Wherever the hell is a camera when you need one._

"You were the only tolerable thing," she allows and flashes him the briefest of smiles in return.

And then she pulls away.

 _So there you have it,_ he thinks as he bounds up the stair two at a time. _The Royal Treatment._ Frosty, difficult, but never a dull moment. 

He had her, he thinks. By the end of the evening, her interest was piqued in spite of herself. She would never concede that to be the case, of course. And as for what he thinks of her... He huffs suddenly into the night air and then pats down his suit for a cigarette. 

If she calls — no. _When_ she calls... If she deigns to step into his ramshackle studio, it will make for interesting times indeed. He's never had a real princess before, though the same can't quite be said about queens.

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

"Slum studio" rightly sums it up. Number 20 Pimlico Road, Pimlico is wedged between the Sunlight Laundry and a nondescript antique shop in a tired block of Victorian flats. And even though the sun had all but disappeared by now, her Royal Highness keeps her sunglasses perched on her nose, an Hermès scarf wrapped tight around her head and securely knotted at her chin. 

She doesn't need to ask to know that they are completely alone. The little-known door in the road behind leads her eventually to his studio on the ground floor, which she later learns also houses a darkroom and a secretary's office with a bed nestled in a recess "for guests". Again he peppers the silence with quips and stories of the many _many_ who have come and gone before her — models, dancers, actors, personalities of varying infamy and fortune. Soon, he has amused her enough so she has to hide her laughs behind a raised hand. She does not ask which of his eclectic mix of subjects spends the night in that little bed in the corner of his office. Or whether instead they make their way down that spiral staircase — wooden treads he’d pinned round a polished copper pillar — and spend the moonlight in his bed. 

He leaves her perched on a highish stool and disappears back down the spiral stair. And then he keeps her waiting and she rather suspects he does so on purpose, rattling and crashing doing God knows what while she sits and waits without knowing. And yet she will wait with outward detachment, even though her heart is pounding with anticipation. The studio lights are muted and against the dim and dark of his expansive playground, there is an intimacy in the space. 

When he finally makes his way up again, his shirt sleeves are folded roughly, his hair is tousled and he moves with the easy grace of a man happy in his castle. He lights his cigarette and then her own, the thin lines of smoke making whimsical volutes in the air. She marvels that the hanging mist does not seem to bother him. In stark contrast, the great Cecil Beaton has a small conniption the moment he sees her tortoiseshell cigarette holder at any palace photoshoot.

He is ever so polite and yet thoroughly immune to her royalty. _Don’t smile,_ he tells her. _It’s a lovely smile, but don’t._ Click-click. _Turn this way. Better._   _That necklace, do you have another? Then take it off, please. And those earrings too. There,_ he huffs softly with an air of satisfaction. Click-click.  _Stripped bare and lovelier._

He insists she changes out of her trademark Dior and instead, he hands her a Bardot top. _Just your size,_ he adds with a confidence that should ring alarms, and then tips his chin towards his office door. And God help her, but she does not resist him, not really. He would give his direction, she would glare mutely at his nonchalant temerity, but then she would  _go_.

Supplicant. 

He tells her, between a slew of seemingly indifferent clicks of his Leica, that she hasn’t the faintest idea who she really is. 

 _I know perfectly well,_ she grits out.   

 _No,_ he corrects her softly, almost detachedly. _Not the faintest idea._

Click. 

 _Turn_ , he commands her softly and now her back is to his lens, and she throws a baleful gaze back over her shoulder. Unsmiling, like he willed it earlier. Haughty, because she will prove him wrong. She knows perfectly well who she is.

But he walks to her now, striding over suddenly. And then his long fingers graze the length of her neckline before he tugs her Bardot top down over her shoulders — one, and then the other. _Stripped bare and lovelier_ , she remembers him saying. His fingers skim her skin and they both ignore the way her breath changes, the way her skin pebbles in their wake. He returns and stands behind his infernal little camera.

 _That business with your loving family and Peter Townsend,_ he says now and she visibly stiffens. _Cruel_ , he pronounces feelingly, an echo of the nation’s thoughts. But then he adds, _Was he really as dreary as he seemed?_

She blinks. _He’s decent and old-fashioned,_ she offers eventually and even though it is Peter who is under fire now, she feels rather more on trial here for having loved such a man. _Easy qualities to mock,_ she adds quietly. Their eyes lock and hers accuse him of an unnecessary meanness. 

 _Do you miss him?_ he asks instead. But perhaps there is another question within the question. She swallows. 

 _Sometimes_ , she whispers.

Click.

* * *

“His place” just down the winding wood steps is _Disque Bleu_ cigarette smoke, carelessly and carefully strewn art, useless and priceless bric-a-brac. A committed artist and a carefree bachelor’s existence both: crystal whiskey tumblers, heavy ashtrays, a leather jacket thrown over the back of a chair. An all-white sitting room contrasts sharply with dramatic drapes and violet wallpaper in the other where a large and empty bed sits, still studiously unmade. Rolls and rolls of film and frames and frames of portraiture; curious knick-knacks, among them a little wooden boat stuck with drawing pins, framed Audubon bird prints, and a carving of an oriental lady wearing a wide brim hat, every hair on her naked sex etched in loving detail. 

And him. He dominates the room, his personal and particular scent, and a ghost of expensive cologne hangs in the air as if he’d just touched himself up. And maybe he had. Whether in a well-cut suit or prowling about in well-worn jeans like he is now, Tony Armstrong-Jones is always neat as he is vain. She has no delusions about his self-awareness: he knows he is a handsome man, and as an artist obsessed with finding just the right angle and light wherever he turns, she rather suspects he takes every care to project exactly what he fancies himself to be at any given moment.

They gaze at a huge Regency mirror now, at the names scrawled across by a diamond he keeps nearby. She stares at it and tries not to count the many, many men and women he’s brought down here. _The routine,_ she wants to sneer. _Isn’t it so very polished?_ Well it must be — the glass is positively crawling with signatures. She stares at his curriculum vitae, lets the names wash over her. Eartha Kitt. Marlene Dietrich. Even the Kabaka of Bugunda. 

“I want to write my name,” she announces suddenly, turning to stare as if daring him to refuse her.

“Too risky, darling,” he explains lightly, even as he plucks the diamond from the palm-sized Meissen China dish. “I have many friends who are either with the press or else shameless for them. But here,” he drops the rock in her palm. “Use a nickname instead.”

 _Bud_ , she remembers suddenly. _Not yet a rose,_ Lilibet used to say. And at that, Margaret grounds the childish name to dust with her proverbial shoe. Instead she lies and says she hasn’t a nickname. 

“Beryl,” he offers softly and for a moment he stares at her through the mirror as if she really is all that — expensive, precious, resilient, sometimes exquisite. Even rare. But then he adds, with a small smirk almost directed to himself, “Rhymes with Peril.” 

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

She is not easy. Nothing about her is easy. Nothing about her yields or wants yet to yield. She doesn’t trust him, which only proves how very clever she actually is. Which only makes him want to win her over, if only because he hates to lose.

He had heard she can be a dazzling wit, and he’s caught snatches of the same. It’s intoxicating, like whiffs of an exotic woman’s perfume… and then nothing. The door slams shut again and she is back to staring at him like he were a little odious toad.

And yet he knows she is drawn to him. He knows because she stares at him the way he finds himself staring at her.

It’s a touch poetic, watching her develop her own image in the shadows. He does the usual thing of personally taking his delectable subject through the darkroom process: baptising their photo paper into first the developer, then the stop bath, then the fixer before washing the chemicals off in moving water. Up close, she is surprisingly delicate. Diminutive even, with that little waist he so admires. The perfect hourglass, replete with beautiful breasts he longs to weigh in each hand. Right now they are all that betray her icy nonchalance, the subtle rise and fall of her royal chest a little too quick for one who apparently doesn't give a fuck.  

That, and her telltale pulse that he takes with impudence, his expressive fingers covering over her sweet little wrist as he stands too close behind her and plays teacher.

She tells him he’s vain. She tells him she was sure at first that he was queer. _Your tidy little hips,_ she bites out even as he presses them into the curve of her buttocks. _But now I see you’re not queer._ He smiles into her hair. 

 _This whole routine is far too practised and well-oiled,_ she accuses scornfully. Her stings, her needles and nettles are out in force now even as her perfume wraps around him like velvet, the radiant heat of her lithe little body warming his own. But when he finally hangs her up; when the water stops dripping off her edges and at last she — the _imago_ — breathes… Margaret stares at herself and it is like she’s seen a stranger and a long-lost friend.

 _It’s a Margaret I’ve never seen before,_ he tells her.

 _No one’s ever seen before,_ she corrects him in a whisper. And he could kiss her now, he knows. He could turn her around roughly and take her, feel her fight him on principle until she finally melts into his mouth like they’ve both been waiting all along… 

But he finds he cannot.

For as much as he’s told her to chuck the princess outside Pimlico, she is Princess still in his head.      


	2. Chapter 2

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

Philip thinks the whole thing is hilarious. Lilibet-the-Queen is, predictably, quietly appalled.  

Lilibet-her-sister might also be quietly jealous.  

“You...!” Margaret’s lanky brother-in-law is wagging his finger now, his mouth twisted in barely concealed amusement. Philip brandishes the morning’s paper near her face and tries to find the words even as his eyes flicker over to his wife’s warning gaze. Finally he settles on, “That was rather bold, giving your picture to the Mail. What were you thinking?”

“I told you I hated Cecil’s work. He’s a bore.” Margaret slips a Chesterfield into her tortoiseshell holder as if to press her point. They know to wait until she blows the first ring into the still palace air. “I liked this Tony and what he did. I look more... me.”

“You look naked!” the Queen finally speaks and there’s a slight tremor in the accusing tone. She stops herself before she tries again. “It isn’t... ladylike.”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic, Lilibet,” Margaret groans. “I was perfectly decent. Fully dressed. It’s just clever camera angles. Tony was a perfect gentleman.” The last few words fade a little; she smothers them with another drag of her cigarette, her eyes no longer meeting her sister’s as she clouds the room with smoke.

“I say though,” Philip muses now and he locks eyes with Lilibet over the broadsheet. Something passes between them that suddenly puts his Queen wife on guard. 

“No,” she pre-empts before he can say much more.

“Oh come now, darling. He’s certainly got a different eye. It’ll be fun!”

“I am not baring my shoulders!” 

“Oh but I wish you would,” Philip glibly replies and easily dodges a royal swat. “But seriously, darling. What if he does us all? You, me, the children…”

“Cecil will be hurt,” Lilibet tries again, though her protest sounds weaker now.

“There are worse things,” Margaret drawls, “than hurting darling Cecil’s feelings. Such as being trussed up in taffeta and lace, and made to sit on a tuffet like an insipid nursery rhyme.” She perches herself primly on the edge of the Ottoman now and slips effortlessly into character. “If not for you, Princess” she gasps in an eerie mimicry of the flappable snob behind the imagined camera, “the commonplace creature can’t _possibly_ imagine a life worth living beyond her chores. And now to me, Your Royal Highness!” She gives two quick claps as if calling the dogs. "A little less chin – we don’t want to look gouty, do we… and a one, two, three and flash!"

Much later, Margaret learns that Cecil Beaton is indeed worth hurting. If only because hurting him means healing Tony in some small measure.

* * *

There is a collective sense of adventure as they all head out, Tony insisting — in his affable, affectionate, professional manner — that a natural setting would relax the children in a way that posed portraiture indoors can never hope to achieve. 

Margaret follows them all from a safe distance and watches as he works his special brand of magic. Again, he seems immune to royalty, his face furrowed in concentration as he considers the ambient light and makes his minute adjustments. It feels effortless, almost too easy; he calls out to them from time to time and she watches as her sister — Great Britain's Monarch herself — dutifully takes his instruction, as she stands on the stone bridge next to Philip; as royal husband and wife, clad now in timeless, sensible country attire, smile down adoringly at Charles and Anne, both children pretending to read a book by the stream.

Again Margaret is struck by the intimacy of it all, but now she gets to play the observer and not the observed. She secretly thrills at the deft, artful way he moves them all like his chess pieces. Ridiculous, really. Too damnably cool, and so at home with his craft that he sometimes eschews looking through the camera before he takes the shot. Instinctual. Primal. Sexy as all hell.  

“Really, Lilibet,” she tuts from her tree and watches as they all turn around to face her in synchrony, noticing her presence for the very first time. “You could at least look like you’re enjoying yourself."

“What are you doing here!” Lilibet quips but she smiles cheerily at her sister and it is invitation enough; Margaret pushes herself off the thick trunk she was leaning against and strolls over now, patently ignoring her photographer. She feels him quirk a small smile anyway, as if he knows _exactly_ why she came. 

“I got curious,” Margaret shrugs. “I don’t see why you should all have such fun without me. And this is all rather darling, this show. All _I_ got was a creepy little studio and a hard wooden stool. But you really ought to act the part, Lil. Put a little bit of gusto.” Margaret skips up the bridge suddenly, tucks her hand into Philip’s arm and leans over now, staring down at her nephew and niece. She pastes on one of Lilibet’s smiles — the one she wears when she is publicly polite while privately put-out.

“Are they quite near enough to the stream you think?” she stares down at Tony now, clipping her words the way only her sister does. “Not… too close perhaps?” She cocks her head to the side expectantly, and Philip gives a short snort when he recognises the mannerism instantly.

“They are quite safe, ma’ — I mean, Your Highness.” Tony's eyes dance and in this light, she sees now that they are very blue.

“And the book they are pretending to read…” she squints now before winking at little Anne. “Is it a _proper_ sort of book, you think. Not too heavy, or… or...” She waves her hand as if searching for the word and lets it all hang in the air for two moments too long before thinly ending with, “Too French?”

“That’s more like something Mummy would say,” grumbles Lilibet good-naturedly as she swats Margaret away. “Get on with you. You’re being a nuisance!” 

“I just got the Royal Shoo,” she informs Tony in a stage whisper before twirling off the other side of the bridge.  

They all have tea after that, and he is irresistible now. Somehow the morning's work had forged an invisible bond, a near-friendship of sorts. A trust that perhaps even Cecil doesn’t enjoy, despite all his official years as Royal Snapper. Even Mummy joins them and it is clear she adores Tony, and even Lilibet is quite won over. 

“Well done,” Lilibet says in her prim Queen voice, but she allows the corners of her mouth to tilt up into something like genuine affection and Margaret watches as something soft, in turn, seeps into his blue eyes. Is it relief, she wonders. Or pride? A reciprocity of goodwill? This is an altogether different side of Tony from what little she’s seen when he’s out in society. Out there, he is all glib irreverence verging lightly on scorn. Alone with her, and he’s a prowling panther playing with his food.

But here now, elbows deep in buttered scones and surrounded by her very closest family, he is charm and grace and wise discretion. The sharp edges of his ironic humour, the ambiguous insouciance are untraceable now. The provocateur is gone and in its place, this utterly loveable man that Margaret cannot stop watching. 

Moth to flame.  

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

The Duke of Edinburgh strides over now, his lanky frame hard to miss even from the corner of his eye. Tony is dying for a smoke but he turns around anyway and takes the proffered hand. 

“Jolly good, bloody good job,” Philip mutters as he pumps Tony’s arm. “Thoroughly enjoyable, what a surprise. Come back again. The missus loves your photos already.”

Tony laughs quietly, having long decided that he likes the Duke, that there’s something familiar about him even though they’d never met until today. In another lifetime, in a pub someplace, they might have gotten along. Perhaps not famously, but well enough. 

In another lifetime, Tony thinks. Or perhaps even in this one.

“She is incorrigible,” Philip provides suddenly, tilting his sharp chin toward the women. “Chalk and cheese, those two.”

“Your sister-in-law?” Tony clarifies politely. “I had no idea Her Royal Highness has such a good ear for accents.”

“Especially her sister’s,” grins Philip widely. “Sometimes she even has me fooled on the telephone, the minx.”

Tony covers a smile. 

“I see you, you know,” the Duke adds now, his eyes still trained on the two women in the far end of the room. The Queen Mother had long retired, as had the children with Nanny. “The both of you. I see how you look at each other.”

“Look at each—“

“You don’t have to get coy around me, Tony. I’m not the Private Secretary. But let me give you some sage advice, man to man.” Tony turns to face the Duke now and sees that the latter's mouth is turned upward in a wry smile, the eyes crinkled in good humour. It goes some way to unfurl the knot that had started to tighten in Tony’s gut.

Until—

“Run,” Philip delivers his punchline. “While you can, get out now, for the love of God and country!” It is meant to be a joke, but Tony misses none of the warning. “A man like you… so much talent,” Philip shakes his head. “You have a gift. But when you’re yoked with one of them…” And he gestures to the sisters now. “You’ll always be second fiddle. Always.”

* * *

Later, they ditch her usual carriage of choice and she climbs onto the back of his beloved Matchless 350, his spare helmet pressed down over her carefully coiffured hair, her body, her face pressed into his back. He revs his engine noisily until at least three faces peer down from palace windows disapprovingly and she laughs a throaty, genuine laugh that affects him more than he wants to think about right now.

The security entourage follows behind dutifully but the streets are clear for the hour is late. The Royal Rolls pulls into the little street parallel to his Pimlico studio and turns out their lights to wait. He takes her inside, her hand firmly in his, their footsteps a jumble as they find their way in the dark. 

He doesn’t take her downstairs, not to his sitting room, not to his bedroom where it’s warm and violet and velvet and seductive. Instead, he takes his time to light her as she stands in the middle of his studio like a lone candle. She is fully clothed until he undresses her — first with his eyes, and then with each quiet command.

He never touches her, even as he tells her how and what and where to strip and stare and stand. When he finally takes the shot, he can hear her every laboured breath, each pant a hardening of his resolve even as blood rushes down low and fills him to the point of distraction.

She is exquisite. 

 _Fuck the Duke,_ he thinks.

* * *

She summons him one day, shortly after. Not directly, of course, but through her friend — one of her prettier ladies-in-waiting, he later finds out, Lady Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart. He had never had it all “staffed out” like that before, never been asked on a date by proxy.

Except it isn’t a date, not really. Six to eight of them all in the end, and Colin and Anne Tennant among them. It should be more awkward, considering how Colin used to escort the Princess to everything, and how the press used to adore flinging them together. Apparently that’s how it had all started with Tennant and Anne, actually. Covertly canoodling as their set flitted from ballet to play to party. Something to do until the ashtray piled high, the party ran dry, and the Princess finally called it a night at four in the morning.

He’s part of the set now, but they are never alone. This is her show, her stage and she stands front and centre always. The limelight suits her: she comes alive like a flower finally taken out of the marble-tiled bathroom and into natural light. She soaks in each ray hungrily and blooms. By the fifth hour, she’s funnier, rather obnoxious, and more outrageous than ever and he watches as men watch her, scheming and enthralled. Their open faces each a mirror fragment, perhaps, of how he feels. 

There is the occasional suggestion, a flicker of something that tells him what he wants to know — that this is all a necessary game. A gaze too long, a graze of an elbow, a tiny smile before they each turn away. At one point past midnight, she falls into a sofa with a tipsy giggle and it looks almost accidental that she should land right beside him.

“Hullo,” he murmurs. Her distinctive perfume has lasted even until now, or perhaps she keeps a small vial in her purse.

“Oh it’s you!” She smiles happily and he isn’t fooled for a second. They stare dead straight ahead but their fingers touch underneath her full skirt and she doesn’t move away when he starts to stroke the inside of her littlest finger with his own. 

“Enjoying yourself?” she asks and he smiles.

“I am now.”

“What have you been doing most of the evening anyway?” she demands to know and he casts her a sidelong glance.

“Oh I think you know,” he replies lightly. “You’ve been keeping one eye on me all evening, after all.” He lets the smugness seep into his voice and is delighted when she laughs.

“You are very sure of yourself...” But her words catch in her throat when he reaches over and grips her little hand, still hidden under her large couture skirt.

“You,” is all he needs to say and turns to stare deep into her eyes. The jazz is velvet, the mood lighting shrouding their faces. But even in the dark, she is still the biggest star. They can only snatch seconds.

“Me?” Breathless now.

“I spent my evening mostly staring at incandescent you.”

* * *

He can’t remember whether he’s heard this story before. When Mummy gets fired up about her favourite boys, it can take a while for her to remember to draw breath. (“My sons,” he remembers her saying at countless parties before someone would clear their throat to ask politely about Tony, lurking close behind. “Oh him,” she would say, "—he’s my other son.”) 

They’re alright as far as half-brothers go, Tony supposes. Will and Brendan Parsons are each as inoffensive as blancmange and just about as colourful. It’s not really their fault they came from the loins of an earl—which is the chief recommendation of their character, as far as their shared mother is concerned.

Tony supposes he can’t _really_ complain. It was a pleasant surprise she took his call at all.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’ve been up to, Mummy?” Tony asks the Countess of Rosse eventually, curling the telephone cord around his finger. And instantly, the air between them starts to cool.

“Gallivanting about with your awful, pretentious friends, I suppose.” She sniffs just in case Tony misses her disdain. He doesn’t. He never does. 

“Went out last night,” he mumbles, lighting a cig between his lips. “Different crowd to the usual.”

“Mmm...” is all he hears and he knows her attention is already diverted.

“More your crowd, really.” He watches how the smoke hangs in the air, the muted studio lights making it all pretty. He lifts his camera and takes a shot.

“Oh?” 

“Colin Tennant and his missus... Lady Jane Vane-Tempest-something... Billy Wallace — some old politician’s boy. Two more who came and went but they’re your sort of folk so I didn’t pay much attention really…"

He presses the receiver to his ear and waits for the perfect moment to drop _her_ name. To mention _her_ in passing, to save the very, very best for the last.

But the moment doesn’t come. He hears his mother call out to someone in the background, hears her issue a flurry of instructions that neither concern nor involve him. He could be reading out a grocery list for all she cared. In fact, he just might next time.

“You were saying?” she eventually thinks to ask when he falls momentarily silent and waits.

“Oh nothing terribly important,” he returns evenly, his tone pleasant and light. He stubs his cigarette out. “Best not to keep you, Mummy. Send Michael my love.”

* * *

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

She doesn’t know what this is between them. It’s familiar in a way, all this secrecy… except it doesn’t _feel_ at all like how it did with Peter. With Peter, she saw him every other day, especially when Papa wasn’t travelling and stayed home. The cloak-and-dagger, the hiding in plain sight… Longing looks and whispered wistfulness in hallowed hallways, all of that had been delicious. She had loved him since forever. She thought she’d love him forever more. 

She wonders now if she had loved him in spite of it all, or because of it. The seduction of a secret amour. 

With Tony comes all the thrill of the forbidden, all the intrigue of a most amusing charade. But sometimes she wonders about the charade within the charade. 

(With Peter, at least, she always knew where she stood with him. How he belonged to her.)

She doesn’t always ask Tony along, although she misses him dreadfully when he’s not there. And when he’s part of her entourage as she makes her widely publicised jaunts about town, she finds she is no longer in a pique. Instead, they spend all evening and night assiduously apart while driving the other to distraction. Lately, she’s taken to flirting shamelessly with darling, silly Billy. And Billy Wallace, the incorrigible wag, can always be counted on to flirt right back. 

Yet _he_ remains infuriatingly unperturbed. If anything, Billy’s behaviour only serves to encourage Tony all the more, and she watches some nights as some blonde or other strokes his arm while she laughs at something witty he says. Margaret doesn’t need to hear them to know he _will_ be witty. Tony just cannot help himself. She adores how he makes her laugh, but then he makes them all laugh too, these floosies. It is a cheapening, really. And even though he only kisses men on the lips but never the women, never in front of her anyway... Margaret is invariably incensed two hours into the evening.

But always, as if her heart were worn on his sleeve, he can always find a way to make it up to her.

“You’re angry with me,” he says one evening at Lady Cavendish’s. Again, they are sitting quite by accident beside each other on a loveseat, their faces turned away to gaze at the merry milieu even as he finds her hand underneath her skirts and laces two fingers with hers. The room feels suddenly _unbearably_ warm.  

“Why should I be?” she retorts but it is futile; the petulance blots through her brittle, tissue-thin words and she will not turn to see his knowing smile.

“The three blondes from before? Daughters of an old acquaintance of my uncle, Oliver. We used to run around the backyard wearing nothing but our knickers.”

She huffs and rolls her eyes, which only makes him chuckle. He tightens his grip on her hand. 

“I smuggled frogs into the house every night for a week and I used to hide the poor creatures in their clothes and shoes and even their beds, and just wait for the girls to shriek the bloody house down.”

A small twitch of her mouth now and curiosity finally wins out. 

“What happened to you?”

“Oh the usual,” he sighs dramatically, his eyes still roaming the rest of the room even as he pulls her hand into his lap and starts to trace the lifeline across her palm. “Oliver would never hit me — he’s far too permissive — but I was told very sternly never to take frogs into the house again. So instead I had to move on to fish.”

A stunned silence until Margaret swallows. “How big?” she finally asks, her voice thick with amusement. She turns to look at him now, and he releases her palm to tell her, spanning his hands over a foot apart. His lips have thinned into a grimace, but his blue eyes dance with irrepressible mischief. 

A full second before she gives up, dissolving into giggles. “That’s awful!” she gasps, and then imagines each of them now turning down their bedclothes only to discover the stink. That does it. She howls into her gloved hands now, the whiskey warming her up nicely.

“Were you really jealous?” he suddenly asks and she sobers up immediately, pulling herself up straighter.

“What do you—“

“I have no interest in seeing them in their knickers again,” he explains bluntly, staring straight at her now. And then gentler, “You know exactly who I’d rather be seeing. Rather be with. All the time.”

* * *

 

He says these things, but then it’s the other things he doesn’t say. It’s the other things she hears about that make her wonder.

“Twin engines, that’s our Tony. Runs on sex and work, nothing else,” remarks a well-dressed man to a tiny flat-chested chain-smoking dancer. Somehow, he sounds both despairing and proud. _Simon Sainsbury,_ Margaret remembers now. Tony had introduced them earlier. Apparently heir to some sort of grocery business, and most definitely queer. “If it moves,” Simon continues, "Tony’ll have it.”

And that’s just the thing, isn’t it. He hasn’t ‘had' her. They haven’t ‘had’ each other. He’s barely touched her, and yet his appetites are apparently legendary. To be singled out like that… Margaret doesn’t know whether to be gratified or galled. 

And there are other whispers too. His threshold for boredom. (“Almost non-existent.”) His bottomless need for variety. For novelty. For stimulation.

She stares at the three of them now, and this time she remembers their names. Jeremy Fry, chocolate magnate. His stunning wife, Camilla. And the meat in that mouthwatering sandwich, Tony himself. 

He’s leaning into Jeremy’s ear now at a curious angle that strikes Margaret as overly familiar. His nose, sharp and elegant, a hair’s breadth from Jeremy’s neck while the wife looks on.  

How had he once described Jeremy to her? _Irresistible_ , he’d said. _A nine_ , _surely_. “A seven,” she had sniffed and he had only grinned at her as if he knew better. Much better.

Margaret stares at three of them now, noting their easy camaraderie, the naturalness they share with one other. A touch of an elbow, a lean, a smile, a chuckle, a shorthand. She is wholly apart from this cosy arrangement, _and_ _how dare they_.

Later on in the soirée, a younger and entirely forgettable brunette woman tells her the one thing Margaret can never quite forget. 

“He’ll ditch them eventually, ma’am,” she predicts, the bourbon soaking her breath. “He’ll grow tired of them, and then he’ll drop them eventually. When they get too clingy. When it starts to become un-fun.” Forgettable Brunette scarcely registers how Margaret visibly stiffens. Instead she focuses on stubbing out her cigarette with a repetitious force that betrays the fresh bitterness chafing beneath the surface. She stares at the Princess and intones, “Happens. They never see it coming.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

By now, he knows the route to Widcombe Manor like the back of his hand, having long lost count of his weekend getaways. Tony has always enjoyed the ride; as soon as he pulls away from London, all of its nonsense would slide away from him like water off a duck’s back. By the time he zips through Slough and the countryside starts to open up, Tony is a different man. 

But tonight is different and even as he turns onto Bath Road and climbs quickly to top gear, he still feels shackled to London, the whipping wind doing nothing to clear the clouds in his mind. He hadn't called ahead, didn’t even know if they’d be home tonight. But fucking hell, did he need to get away from it all.  

Addict. Work and sex and smokes. But now he's starting to crave something else… 

“Tony!” Camilla is a little taken aback when she finally opens the door, but then he’d never been one for predictability or routine. “It’s Friday,” she explains, a freshly lit cigarette between her manicured fingers.  

She’s dressed in a little black number, eyes laced with a thick fringe of false lashes, her pulse points dabbed with Chanel No. 5. Blonde hair piled high to expose large drop earrings, each diamond winking in the moonlight.  

She is stunning. She’s even more beautiful now than when they first fucked in that ski lodge, what, seven, eight years ago? And Tony shakes his head suddenly with a groan. For instead, all he can think of now is a pair of violet eyes and a head of silky hair as dark as ebony.  

Fucking addict. 

“Hullo,” Jeremy calls out now as he fusses with a cufflink. “Early weekend for you?” he guesses when he reaches the door. Tony just stares in reply and covers Jeremy's hand with his own. 

“Wha—“ But the cufflink falls to the marble floor with a clink as Tony silences him with a bruising kiss, one hand still gripped around Jeremy’s wrist, the other cupping him firmly through the textured weave of his trousers. Tony's eyes flutter close when Jeremy finally kisses back, when Camilla starts to work his belt, when the three of them stumble in, the door shutting firmly behind them. 

* * *

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

And still he will not kiss her. 

He’s gripped her arms, run his fingers through her hair. Stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. He’s pressed the length of his erection into small of her back, his breath feather-light and wispy on the nape of her neck. He holds her hand. Holds her attention. She holds her breath. He brands her skin through her clothes wherever his hand thinks to land.

He’s seen her naked but he has never kissed her, not even once. He makes her wait and she _will_ wait without seeming at all to notice, let alone care. For hell will sooner freeze over before she will show him how much she wants him. How he makes her knees soft, her voice crack. How quickly she forgets Peter.

She knows he wants her. His impatience is legendary. And yet he waits.

She tries one evening, but louses it up. “How was your day?” she ends up asking instead and instantly rolls her eyes. He glances at her and smirks. 

“Are we really going to do How Was Your Day, Dear”?  

“Then do something else. Say something else! I’m bored!” 

Somehow, those are magic words. He looks up sharply and it’s like he’s bristling with righteous indignation. _Good_ , she thinks. _Finally_ , she hopes. She holds his gaze, her chin out and defiant. His eyes are searching hers and she wonders what he’ll find. 

“Three things,” he tells her eventually, evenly. “My mother is a negligent, vain bitch who rather wished I died before she remarried. Second, there is a real chance I’m falling head over dick for you. Also, I don’t believe in marriage. Hideous idea, don’t you think?"

He stares at her, blowing smoke out from the side of his mouth. She takes a drag and blows into his face. He doesn’t even flinch. Her heart is thumping so wildly it could fly, but she replies instead with, “Well. I’m definitely bored now.” 

He picks up his helmet and hers. “Don’t bother,” she tells him icily and turns on her heel before stomping back up his spiral stair.

* * *

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

_Such a fucking princess,_ he thinks. And instead of disdain, he's almost giddy with desire. It's all topsy-turvy — it's everything he'd ever promised himself not to covet: the crazy ostentation, the almost cartoon grandiosity, the grotesque snobbery... The biggest irony, of course, is that his own mother might finally die of pride if she knew how he's been spending his time lately. And _that_ in itself is the most fucked up thing of all.

He lights another cigarette chainily, blows a silvery stream out the corner of his mouth. He wants to roll his eyes but he knows he's lost the right to.  

The Princess M arrives almost an hour late, as she almost always does, delaying dinner for everyone all the more as she insists on a starting round of Famous Grouse that duly punishes every longsuffering calloused liver within a five-foot radius. Only British smokes are allowed in her company and she alternately commands and charms, her moods schizophrenic if she wasn't also _so damn mesmerising_. For to be in her company is to never be bored. 

_A fucking princess,_ he remembers with a jolt sometimes, the way she holds court, every man hanging on her every word. It's a little game, fighting like little boys to light her cigs, jostling to walk her into _Maxims_ especially when the press show up. Tony will always hang back, his manner easy and unhurried, his hands slid deep in his pockets, his smile brilliant against the careful tan of his skin. He is apart from it all even as she keeps him close, but he finds himself keeping tune to her siren song now. He's locked step with her even though no one knows they're dancing. 

_A right brat,_ he tells himself as she excoriates a hapless Johnny-come-lately who doesn't yet understand her many, many unwritten rules. "No one leaves my presence until I give them permission to do so," she barks at him, the jazz band stumbling for a half-beat, the evening's _bonhomie_ curdling with her words. She can be so shrill, the words absurdly over-pronounced, each note landing flat and nasal. The switch has flipped once more, the spell is broken and she is a pumpkin again. _Prissy Princess M_. All eyes in the room drop now and furtively look away. Tony's narrow, but Margaret is in royal form now and he watches as she goes on to verbally flay first a heavily pregnant lady groping for a seat, and then a chap newly and temporarily crippled, hobbling about on sticks. "Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and seen the way you walk?" she sneers as Tony closes his fist, while Andy Warhol leans over and casually bitches in his ear.  

"Lady and a Tramp? More like a poor midget brute," he tuts. Tony cannot smile. 

Sometimes he doesn't know if he wants to slap her or spank her. To love her or leave her.  

But in private, she is his and no one else's. They'll spend hours talking about Warhol’s art, about Day-Lewis’s poetry. She'll tickle his ear with international gossip and teach him how to love the ballet. Sometimes she even sings her little heart out and he can almost love her then, too easily. Twenty dozen pictures on that alone, captured with the Leica, burned into memory. 

_A woman_ , he remembers with a sobering hush sometimes, the way she can suddenly stop his heart and hold his gaze so he tumbles in, two limpid pools of trembling vulnerability and longing swallowing him whole as she simply stares and waits for him to touch her, still too proud to demand it of him but quietly desperate all the same.  

It's just too easy to drop his head and cover her mouth with his own. She melts into him instantly, the sudden hush of the room like a deep sigh of relief. He pulls her closer to him, his hunger taking over now, her little hands clutching his face as he starts to devour her, as she lets him. _Supplicant._

Later, he strokes her face with the back of his hand, tucks her hair behind her ear. She curls up into his side like a kitten with no claws and he cannot fathom ever wanting to hurt her.   

But then one day, she hurts Camilla. 

* * *

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45856576024/in/dateposted-public/)

She doesn’t even remember what she'd said, exactly. All that remains tangible, all that still stays with her like a stain is that sense of having lashed out, of verbally sinking talons into that stupid pile of blonde hair and then pulling with all her might.

She’d been petty and cruel. Margaret knew the exact moment she’d crossed the line, the second his face had changed and his beautiful lips had pressed thin with fury. And still she’d run her mouth, almost unable to stop.  

Margaret had never seen Tony angry, ever. Until now. 

He had taken off on his bike, and here she is now, following behind a half hour later meek as a lamb. He had left without saying a word, and ordinarily she’d never allow the impertinence. _No one leaves a party before I do._  It's always been her biggest rule. _I am the daughter of a King and the sister of a Queen._

He had slipped out and no one had noticed. But she'd missed him instantly. The next few moments had been a blur. She only vaguely remembers not finishing the insult. She remembers leaving the room, someone audibly breathing a sigh of relief. She doesn’t remember getting into the Rolls. 

She should return to Clarence House. Sleep it off, maybe call on him tomorrow evening. It’s Thursday. He’ll still be in Pimlico on Thursday. Won’t he? 

She cannot chance it. Something like self-preservation and instinct spur her on and she sobers up immensely in the car, enough for her to find her way to the side entrance, to fumble with the iron grill fronting his door only to discover it locked. Locked! She starts to shake it until the barrel of his door slides back. 

As soon as the door swings open, she stills. His eyes are blown wide, the circles under them dark and foreboding, his handsome mouth set in a thin line and turned down in the corners so sternly, she almost flinches. Silently, he unlocks the iron grill gate. He doesn’t bother holding the door open when he turns on his heel and saunters back inside. 

She enters the studio silently and watches as he flicks on a lamp, as he lights a  _Disque Bleu_ and tosses the lighter wearily on the nearest work table.  

She should explain. But what can she tell him, exactly? The truth?  

“You left early,” she accuses instead.  

“I did,” he barely mumbles.  

“Why?” 

“You know why.” 

“Because of what I said to your precious Camilla?” Too much. Margaret squeezes her eyes shut and curses herself. She is still dreadfully drunk. She needs to remember that. 

“You were starting to become a bore.” 

“How dare you call me a boor!” 

“I didn’t. But if the shoe fits, ma’am.” He blows a stream out the side of his mouth and smirks. They’re standing five feet apart but the gulf is unbearable.  

“Don’t _Ma’am_ me! Not like this, not the way you say it—” 

“Isn’t that what you always want, though? ‘Ma’am’ this, ‘Your Royal Highness’ that. One moment you’re a try-hard bohemian being chummy with the commoners, the next a fucking stuck-up little royal bitch. Make up your mind, princess.” 

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to,” Margaret hisses. The room tilts and warps for a split-second, a flash of white-hot anger renewing her courage. “I am _always_ royal, Antony. Don’t you ever dare forget that. You insult my sister —  _the Queen! —_  when you insult me!” 

“You insult yourself.” He pierces her with his eyes and his words now, the cigarette pinched hard between his thumb and fore finger.  

And then quietly, “You did not behave like a princess tonight, Margaret Rose.”  

Silence as her mouth falls open. She watches as he smirks humourlessly once more, as he shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it carelessly over the stool. 

“I have work to do,” he mumbles as he starts to head towards the darkroom. 

“Why won’t you touch me.” Her words tumble out and even though they’re borne of pain and confusion, they still sound frosty and furious. But he stops. And that, at least, is something. 

“I don’t want to do this tonight.” 

“Are you sleeping with Camilla?” 

“She’s Jeremy’s wife!” 

“Then why are you protecting her!” 

“Because she’s my friend!” The look on his face is incredulous. “Don’t you even understand the concept? We’re protective of those we love. I _adore_ my friends. All of them. Don’t you understand loyalty? Are you even _capable_ of loving others?” 

“Of course I am!” she almost screams. How dare he. How _dare_ he talk to her as if she’s a monster! 

“You have a strange way of showing it.” 

“You are one to talk,” she seethes. "What do _you_ know about love? You’d flirt with a lamppost!” 

“You’ve not exactly been a wallflower yourself, ma’am.” 

“What, you jealous of Billy?” And now it’s her turn to laugh humourlessly. “I’ve known Billy Wallace all my life. We’ve been friends for a long time.” 

“How wonderful. Maybe you should marry him.” 

“Maybe I should!” 

There is a full and terrifying second as Tony stills, every muscle on his body, his face suddenly tensed as if he’s about to strike. 

Two strides and his hands have pinned her arms to her side, his mouth is rough against her own, his tongue punishing as it searches and finds, as he robs her of speech, of thought, of sense. 

He presses into her now and she feels herself stumble before her back is pushed flush against the wall. He burns a trail of searing kisses down her mouth, her jawline. Her neck twists almost unnaturally to the side as he nips his way down the length of it. 

“What are you doing!” she gasps. 

“You wanted me to touch you,” he replies silkily before returning to that spot where neck and shoulder meet. She sags as her nerves dance to his touch. Her body starts to tremble either with fury or desire. 

“No!” she grits out before his hand cups her breast and squeezes, before his thumb and forefinger pinch the sensitive tip just like it did before with his cigarette. 

“Yes,” she whimpers anyway and hates her weakness for him, even as she arches her back into the curve of his hand, even as he pulls her top down, as his mouth takes over his fingers, as he tastes her and sucks her and groans like a man long starved, a noise so obscene that it turns her hips liquid. 

Peter, darling Peter, Group Captain Peter, reserved and respectable Peter never took her like that. He had always asked, his kisses heartfelt and reverent, his movements slow and steady. He would stare into her eyes, call her darling, his hips rhythmic like a somber metronome, always careful not to crush her as if she were a delicate flower even as he towered over her. With his forearms flanking the sides of her face, he had shielded her from the world. It had always been safe with Peter. Spiritual, even. 

Tony flips her around suddenly so her pale breasts now rub against the bricks and her skin pebbles as the cool of the room hits her sex. With another deft tug, the lace finally gives and she moans as he first slicks her entrance with her own arousal before he slides in fully and without ceremony. 

There are no whispers of love, of contrition, of surety or promise. But he wants her just as she wants him, his capitulation as absolute as her own as their final cries mingle in the glow of the studio. 

* * *

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/32706931218/in/dateposted-public/)

“Darling!” says Gina, her shock wrestling with her delight. She’s already dressed for bed, or at least carries the appearance of it. Then again, he had called barely a half hour ago. And Gina is an actress, after all. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” Tony asks, already knowing the answer. Her diary is almost always full, but she’d drop them all like the knickers of her sweet little pink teddy for ten short minutes with him. Such is their mutual infatuation. Consuming and irrational. Secret and contained. Always been.  

“Everything alright?” she asks now, already dropping ice into the tumbler he favours. He comes up behind her and settles his hands around her waist, presses his nose into her straight black hair and breathes in deep. There is a strange dissonance when a bouquet of Guerlain tickles his nostrils instead. Belatedly, he realises now he’d been expecting Oscar de la Renta. 

_Fool._ For Georgina Ward is no princess. Niece of an earl, maybe. But nothing so expensive or complex or nutty with a trademark scent to match. Their similarities are superficial: dark eyes, dark hair, and a slippery blossom as tight as a mouse’s ear. Apart from that, it’s chalk and cheese, it’s day and night between Gina and his Princess M. 

_Head, hair pulled back roughly and the smell of cigarettes on her skin masking her favourite perfume. Another hard jerk of his hips, another gasp. Another frantic minute perhaps and then he pulls out suddenly with a groan that sounds like pain._

_Margaret's face as she turns to him. Shock mingled with something else he doesn’t recognise until he does. Understanding._

“How can I help?” Gina whispers now, sensing the darkness coming over him. It’s only for a moment; he shakes his head and smiles brilliantly. _Focus_ , he tells himself firmly. 

“Fuck me,” he implores, willing himself to melt into her, to disappear.  


End file.
